China Says Three Hours Of Games Is Enough

from the pac-man-stole-my-youth dept

The online gaming world has bred some strange incidents in parts of Asia, like the Korean man who died after playing for 50 hours straight, or the guy in Japan that created an in-game bully bot to beat up people's characters and steal their goods. After seeing game-related incidents rise in China, the government there is introducing a three-hour time limit for online gaming sessions. After three hours, players' characters will start to lose abilities, and after five hours, they'll be "severely limited". After a five-hour break, gamers can start up again. It's hard to think that hardcore gamers won't find a way around the restrictions, or will simply change games or systems rather than quit playing. Perhaps nothing's quite as effective as Mom taking away the ol' NES controllers was.

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The Life Game

Will kids all over China begin carving Chinese poems on their arms because they can't play? Over in Korea, there's a new online game for virtual marriages, that is like the new Crack Cocaine of online gaming. The distinction between reality and fantasy is blurring for the hardcore gamers, many of who really meet up in real life, and even really marry. Or over in Japan, the distinction between pro-suicide sites and romance sites is blurring, as men are using the suicide sites to arrange romantic suicide encounters and prey on vulnerable teenage girls.

Maybe Asia will export a new phenomenon of online games that have creepy effects on people's real lives.

Re: The Life Game

Re: The Life Game

We don't want too many video game-addled boys stabbing police officers, do we? Could you defend yourself against a friendly 14-year-old who asks you about your job, then suddenly gets out 2 knives and stabs you?

In a rare instance of Japanese cops doing something right, a cop successfully defended himself against a 14-year-old boy armed with two knives who tried to take the cop's gun away.

The boy, who came into the police station under the guise of a "summer research project" about police work, appeared relaxed and normal. The cop explained his job to the boy, and when the boy still stood there smiling, the cop invited him to go home. The boy asked to see a calendar. When the cop turned around, the boy suddenly got out a kitchen knife he had hidden under his belt and stabbed the cop in the back. The cop, despite sustaining a 8-cm deep wound that punctured his lung, managed to wrestle the knife away. The boy then got out another kitchen knife he had hidden in his sock, but the cop, a 2-dan in Judo, wrestled away the knife with his other hand. The cop put the knives in a desk drawer, handcuffed the boy to a desk, sat down, and radioed for help. The cop spent five minutes watching over the boy until help arrived.

The boy had wanted to steal the cop's gun so he could shoot himself. The boy had already stolen a baton from another police station. While under arrest, the boy repeatedly asked the cop to shoot him.

The boy was known as an ordinary student, not a loner, at a rural middle school.

Re: The Life Game

Whooptie shit. Neat, he is a fuck up, period. And that incident in no way can prove video games are the reason.

why should I care about this exactly? because he or someone like him may some day "ask about my job, then suddenly pull out 2 knives and stab me?"

For the record, there's a much better chance of dying in a car accident than a random kid stabbing me for no reason.

Secondly, there are plenty of crazy psychos out there willing to take another human's life for no reason whatsoever. There always have been and there always will be.

Were video games the reason Billy the Kid became the famous name we all know? Did John Wilkes Booth spend a few too many hours playing with the guns in Battlefield 1942? I hear Charles Manson was a HUGE fan of GTA:San Andreas and, over time, couldn't get enough of a fix anymore so he starting a murder spree.

Good

Thank god, lets limit those dam wow gold farmers :). Wait until some the business start howling about restraint of trade.

Ok maybe not. Things like this certainly make me glad I live in a part of the world where the government is ever so slightly less directly heavy handed despite the administrations attempt to make it otherwise.

Re: The Life Game

There is still not enough conclusive proof that video games cause excessive violence, or anything else, regardless of what concerned groups or media might say. There is only speculation, and muddied evidence out there.

Sure they could do a study and have kids play violent video games all day for a year to see what happens. They could also tape someones eyes open and subject them to war films like was done in that movie. But neither study would prove a thing, as it adds a false environment of duress.

Reasonable studies are what's needed here. Give us the facts, and some hard evidence and case studies to back up the claims. An incident or two, or even a few hundred, is not enough to develop a condemning profile, considering the market for online games is now in the millions.

Anything else is just fodder and fluff, designed to sell you a magazine or adspace.